(Chop Suey) If you care about Ohio rock and pop music, you likely have records and/or MP3s with Doug Gillard’s fingerprints all over ’em. The guitarist/vocalist’s lent his keen melodic sensibilities to many important combos from the Cleveland and Dayton areas, including Death of Samantha, Guided by Voices, Cobra Verde, and Gem. As his pedigree indicates, Gillard is a rock traditionalist whose power-pop-leaning songcraft’s embellished by flashy glam and rueful punk gestures. His new album, Parade On, exudes Gillard’s nonchalant brilliance with a hook and road-tested rock dynamics. Singing with a pleasant Midwestern flatness, he spins countless variations on familiar chord sequences and, against great odds, creates a fresh-sounding record in which every song’s a potential single. DAVE SEGAL
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Container’s Seattle show in March fell through, so he’s making it up tonight at the 13th edition of MOTOR—and, of course, I’ll be out of town for it. But you should not miss this Providence, Rhode Island producer (aka Ren Schofield) who records for the fantastic Spectrum Spools label. Container’s part of that recent worldwide movement of musicians who are roughing up techno’s clean, linear lines and manicured beats with serrated synth edges and more bludgeoning kickdrums. His style borrows from industrial music, but in a subtle way, without industrial’s inclination for vocal histrionics. It’s more Cabaret Voltaire and Severed Heads than Ministry or NIN. Portland’s GOODWIN is a brainy techno/house producer who makes his custom-made analog synths speak in elegant and hedonistic tongues. As always with MOTOR, local support is strong: the moonbooted, high-IQed cosmic disco of TJ Max (Midday Veil members Timm Mason and Jayson Kochan; cop their Wrong to Run CD on Debacle), the fun-maximizing electro shapeshifting of Bankie Phones, and the vastly knowledgeable DJ Slow. Kremwerk, 9 pm, $10, 21+. DAVE SEGAL
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(Benaroya Hall) What unites the three pieces on tonight's program is their ties to Vienna—they were written there, or by Vienna natives. Johann Strauss Jr.'s Emperor Waltzes represent the city's light and playful classicism and Brahms's Second Symphony is a bucolic Romantic beast, his longest symphony but the one most at peace. In between them, the orchestra and Jonathan Biss will perform Arnold Schoenberg's Piano Concerto Op. 42. The piece is emotionally and formally complex, a 12-tone work of four movements that are marked in a manuscript found after his death sequentially this way: "Life was so easy." "Suddenly hatred broke out." "A grave situation was created." "But life goes on." By the time the piece had its debut in New York in 1944, Schoenberg had already fled his home city of Vienna, by that time Nazi-ridden. Biss, the featured pianist, is a charismatic young crusader—in a long family line of musicians—for music, writing books, teaching at Curtis Institute where he studied, and giving passionate performances. This looks promising. JEN GRAVES
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(2 Bit Saloon) Back in April, Stranger contributor Sean Jewell exclaimed, “finally, a band from Bremerton that doesn’t suck,” as he praised peninsula-based garage-rock trio Dear Darkness. While I may not be as gung ho to call them the best Kitsap band ever (that title goes to Claymore), I certainly see a solid future for them on this side of the water, much of it will surely be filled with sweat-drenched sing-alongs in sold-out bars. Show up early for local upstarts Blood Drugs, a band whose (future) releases you could easily file alongside Fugazi, Jawbox, and even Jawbreaker. KEVIN DIERS
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And here's all our recommended music events—tonight, tomorrow, this weekend, and beyond!